There's too much shrillness around as the moment approaches to decide on new forms of press regulation. We need a rational, even-tempered debate after Lord Justice Leveson reports this week. The British press prides itself on its plurality, losing no opportunity to announce how vigorous and varied a discussion ensues when debate is engaged on substantive issues. But not on this one.

The press – as anachronistic as that term now sounds in a digital age – have not, on the whole, been a great advert for plurality in the last month. In that time, they have fixed Leveson in their cross hairs and unleashed a ferocious ordnance in his direction. Supporters of some form of statutory regulation, which many assume Leveson will propose, have been singled out. Bullied even. Those who have perfectly reasonably made a case for such measures have been characterised as people who say: "I love a free press, but..."

Opponents of regulation underpinned by statute could just as easily be represented by the phrase: "I loathe the excesses of the press, but..." Amid the shrill, partisan and often self-righteous onslaught that has been unleashed over the last month, only the slightest of attention has been paid to the plight of the people who told Leveson of how their lives were bruised and battered after encounters with the press. Ordinary people, and celebrities too. Human stories that involve pain and grief of the type that the press usually feast on. But not this time.

There are reasonable, cogent arguments to be made about regulation or the lack thereof. There is a proper debate that we need to have post-Leveson, one characterised less by tribalism and more by reason. The issues and details of statutory control or self-policing are more open to compromise than anyone sheltering in a bunker between Hacked Off territory and the Daily Mail might guess. But they are no less complex for all that.

Sir Brian Leveson has little besides complexity to consider as he signs off on this monster of a task. Does he broadly endorse a kind of Press Complaints Commission Plus regime, involving proper investigatory powers and tough fines but not based on statute, as variously advanced by Lords Hunt and Black of the PCC and the Telegraph respectively?

Or does he embrace some other formulas for reform from the Hacked Off campaign, the Media Standards Trust and sundry groups of academics that require some form of legislative framework? These are all supposedly formed free from government control yet subject to statutory invigilation or parliamentary checks of some kind or other. They are labelled "independent", but not so independent that they aren't yoked in some way to Whitehall.

One way or another, all of our press will henceforth be regulated more heavily; digging out the facts that underpin press freedom becomes more difficult than ever – for investigative reporters on the Financial Times as well as the Sun.

The press must mount a robust defence of why we should be regulated differently from doctors, lawyers, teachers, the City. How would a belligerent press behave if they saw a powerful, self-regulated industry behave as badly as journalism sometimes has over the last 10 years? We know the answer to that.

The newspaper industry does not shy from eviscerating institutions or industries that fall short. The BBC, the Church of England, banks, MPs, the FA and others have all felt the judgmental tones of the press in recent years. Often, that criticism has been correct.

And yet faced with incontrovertible evidence that sections of our own industry have misbehaved on a grand scale, what do we do? In the last month, we have often chosen to lash out. As the Leveson report nears, we have closed down debate, rather than ventilating a range of arguments. It doesn't look like a "free" press – it looks like one shackled to self-interest.

This behaviour is baffling for readers. They can see the dysfunction better than anyone. As volley after volley is directed at Leveson, they are asking themselves: what is going on? Why are the press behaving like this? Aren't they the ones who messed up on a grand scale? Why are they lashing out now? Wasn't the regulator asleep at the wheel?'

Non-journalists need convincing that we can, and should, regulate ourselves. After all, the last effort didn't work out too well. One long-serving former editor of the Daily Telegraph recently described the PCC as "a farce" during his time in office. A free press would debate these issues more robustly. Newspapers would ask why it was that the PCC was sometimes seen as a body puppeteered by powerful industry interests. Instead, from some opponents of Leveson we get often overblown scaremongering about the power of Westminster to muzzle a free press. The debate post-Leveson could do with more subtlety, nuance and humility.

In the light of what we have heard at the Leveson hearings, there is an understandable urge to find a way of wiping out the cruelties, the invasions and the stupidities that were paraded during the inquiry. That is what many ordinary people want to see happen. Newspapers will need to point out why tighter codes and guidelines don't always make things better. They might, for instance, have stopped the Daily Telegraph paying a middle man for those stolen MPs' expenses discs. Now the new Bribery Act would stop both of them. And there are already legions of legal avenues open to those who want to stop the press from getting anywhere close to publishing the story.

Restrictions can mean the slow, unremarked death of vital information. The crude equation at the BBC, and in many other newsrooms, has long been between the story itself and the hassle factor that accompanies it. Too much hassle means "do not pursue". It's not worth the candle. This paper fears the growth of the hassle factor after Leveson reports. We believe that freedom of the press, just like the freedom of expression guaranteed by UN charter, is the real underpinning of democracy.

Understandably, Leveson has often seemed keener on preparing the way for court cases prompted by published stories than he has in finding ways of ensuring that they are published in the first place. High on his agenda is likely to be a mechanism for guaranteeing that newspapers comply with regulations, backed up by statute. Making groundbreaking stories easier to print doesn't appear to be such a priority, yet see how a single newspaper breaking a single, risky story – say the Guardian's revelation of Lord McAlpine's ordeal – can change everything.

But the crimes of hacking matter, and the crimes of corrupting public officials, when and if proved. Journalists are not above the law. In the last few years, some forgot this. They are there to defend and inform the ordinary citizen as ordinary citizens themselves. The mendacious shambles inside News International made a new drive for reform inevitable.

The PCC should have sniffed out News International's lies earlier, just as we can't acquit the Metropolitan Police of credulous indolence. There are serious issues here that – utterly sincerely – divide journalists themselves, just as they divide the general public. Newspapers, in the form of new industry proposals, have reacted to them with seriousness. Lord Hunt, the designer of a replacement PCC, is a seasoned regulator who has advised both the Law Society and Financial Ombudsman Service. His favoured outcome is a new body that investigates scandals as well as rules on complaints. It can fine transgressing papers. Its writ runs through five-year rolling contracts. Every major management has agreed to sign up.

Passionate opposition comes from those who want statutory underpinning. There is considerable reason to grant these proposals due consideration. Might such an approach help raise standards? Build in firmer responsibilities alongside the rights entrusted to the press? But statute is slow to construct and might be cumbersome to enforce in a world where unregulated Twitter dominates the headlines. Statute might permit ministers and MPs to give running commentaries on editorial decisions. And statute sends a message to governments around the globe all too ready to take Westminster practice as their laissez-passer to persecute awkward journalists still more.

Lord Hunt, who will be negotiating with politicians and not with Sir Brian Leveson after the report is published, has plenty of scope for manoeuvre, especially over direct industry involvement in the new body. But expect, in the nature of this controversy, many calls to inflict pain on newspapers that campaigners don't like and many references to the last chance saloon.

The bottom line argument over media regulation, whether cutting a "disciplinary" swath through Newsnight reporters or threatening statutory retribution, is this: the real law is the law that says anything that can go wrong will go wrong. The BBC will have more investigative debacles, come what may. The press may wallow in more opprobrium. We may have to accept that the price of press freedom inexorably involves sometimes getting things wrong – as well as some right. The question we have to ask is: if we choke that freedom away by law, and then by adding more and more law for every mistake, what freedom will there be left?

• Inquiry recommends new regulator with statutory backstop• Politicians got too close to press owners• Hunt gave a 'perception of bias' in contacts with News Corp• Met criticised for failing to re-investigate hacking